I had lots of plans for 2011 but fate wanted it otherwise, in short 2011 started with complete meltdown in my life.
In January my Mother was diagnosed with brain tumor and over 3 months i saw how the tumor ate my mothers sanity away day by day. She died on March 25, 2011 and i have a very hard time coping with this. She was the most decent person i've ever known. Imagine a person who cant lie, never do anything selfish, always willing to give a helping hand, live a life without any debt, never loose selfcontrol, always caring, well it may sound crazy to have all these virtues but my Mother was such a person. Her only concern was for our little family and whats left of it.
I am soooo pi.... that she didnt get to live the life as older people usually do, something came along and snuffed away her retirement with equals. That woman raised me and my sister single handed, worked very hard and never left us kids with a feeling of something was missing. Of all people she didnt deserve this. I will never forgive whom ever is in charge of it all, never!
Shortly before she went sick other disasters decided to knock on my door, my DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) caved in and could not be fixed without loss of all data. Yes, i DO have backups but putting together a DAW over 3 years accumulate something like 300+ plugins and 100+ audio apps which need to be re-installed, this WILL take some time, usually it takes me around 6 months to get around to all plugins. In January i thought i might aswell take the leap and go for Win 7 64bit on a new DAW since i have to start from scratch again. Its April and that friggin new DAW still wont work, it has all kinds of errors popping up all the time, so now i've given up and returned to the old DAW which is empty and trying to figure out what the hell i'm supposed to do.
I'll resurface at some point but right now its pretty hopeless and i feel like smashing things.
So, plans for 2011 are to survive and keep breathing.
/Michael
Saturday, April 16, 2011
Saturday, January 15, 2011
Yamaha Motif XF Review
This is a very subjective review of Yamaha Motif XF from a sound designer/synthesist view.
Normally all my work is done using s DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) meaning a PC and some various software with endless possibilities. So how exciting is a hardware workstation for a person like me, in this case Motif XF, well let me put it this way, i feel like i've been pushed back 20 years in time. They call it a Music Production Synthesizer but the is not a shred of synthesis in this thing. Motif XF is a huge sample player, thats it. It has a very limited synth section, in short it has 1 VCF 1 VCA and 1 LFO which equals to a tad better than a Sound Font player.
When used as a preset player for live situations, then it shines with its 4 assignable effects and many on the fly knobs to use in VOICE mode.
When used as a sequencer it is crippled by the fact that you can only use insert effects on 8 out of 16 channels. I bet if you planned to sequence a song using 16 very nice sounding VOICE presets then you will be dissapointed to know that only 8 of these preset will include the insert fx like they are supposed to and the rest must live without the insertion effects. This is very annoying. So i tend to call the seuqence an 8 channel sequencer.
A look into the stock samples in the synth section reveals lack of many things, first of all in total there are ONLY 3 modulated stereo waveforms for use in broad pads, the mono noise sample is so short that you can hear the loop unless you plan to use it for a closed hihat. The synthetic bell waveforms are very thin and many waveforms are pretty useless as building blocks, however the P5 waveforms are clearly ment for serious sound design, each of these waveforms are phase locked and precise over the entire keyboard range. These are the waveforms you should use to create other waveforms, eg mix the 0 Degree Saw with a 180 Degree Saw and you get a pulse waveform. Thats how most samples should work in the synth section, but only a few do it. There is a complete lack of smart additive waveforms, harmonics you use to create physical model instruments. Sure you could use a sine wave to build up the harmonics but then it would eat away polyphony which we always try to preserve.
The handling of actual NEW waveforms are a nightmare from a sound designers view, you cant save individual waveforms but have to save the whole lot, which also means whenever you need to load a waveform then you have to import all again. In this case the machine adds the loaded waveforms to the existing waveforms so you end up with tons of duplicates in Flash Memory.
Anyways, you will need some kind of software to handle this proper.
The Arpeggio functions, yeah its super great when working in VOICE mode but when working in SONG and PATTERN mode the ARP settings will reset, so you have to find the original arp setting by browsing 7000 arps on each arp'ed preset. Dohhh
As you can guess, I am not super thrilled about Motif XF but I am a stubborn type of guy with a mission, the mission is simple, to improve Motif XF. I will start by making some of the sound designer samples which are missing and to make a point i will make these samples take ONLY 1 MB of the 128 MB free assignable ram in Motif XF.
177 KB is reserved for a useful 2 second NOISE sample. This gives me 823 KB to play with.
Wish me good luck ;)
/Michael
Normally all my work is done using s DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) meaning a PC and some various software with endless possibilities. So how exciting is a hardware workstation for a person like me, in this case Motif XF, well let me put it this way, i feel like i've been pushed back 20 years in time. They call it a Music Production Synthesizer but the is not a shred of synthesis in this thing. Motif XF is a huge sample player, thats it. It has a very limited synth section, in short it has 1 VCF 1 VCA and 1 LFO which equals to a tad better than a Sound Font player.
When used as a preset player for live situations, then it shines with its 4 assignable effects and many on the fly knobs to use in VOICE mode.
When used as a sequencer it is crippled by the fact that you can only use insert effects on 8 out of 16 channels. I bet if you planned to sequence a song using 16 very nice sounding VOICE presets then you will be dissapointed to know that only 8 of these preset will include the insert fx like they are supposed to and the rest must live without the insertion effects. This is very annoying. So i tend to call the seuqence an 8 channel sequencer.
A look into the stock samples in the synth section reveals lack of many things, first of all in total there are ONLY 3 modulated stereo waveforms for use in broad pads, the mono noise sample is so short that you can hear the loop unless you plan to use it for a closed hihat. The synthetic bell waveforms are very thin and many waveforms are pretty useless as building blocks, however the P5 waveforms are clearly ment for serious sound design, each of these waveforms are phase locked and precise over the entire keyboard range. These are the waveforms you should use to create other waveforms, eg mix the 0 Degree Saw with a 180 Degree Saw and you get a pulse waveform. Thats how most samples should work in the synth section, but only a few do it. There is a complete lack of smart additive waveforms, harmonics you use to create physical model instruments. Sure you could use a sine wave to build up the harmonics but then it would eat away polyphony which we always try to preserve.
The handling of actual NEW waveforms are a nightmare from a sound designers view, you cant save individual waveforms but have to save the whole lot, which also means whenever you need to load a waveform then you have to import all again. In this case the machine adds the loaded waveforms to the existing waveforms so you end up with tons of duplicates in Flash Memory.
Anyways, you will need some kind of software to handle this proper.
The Arpeggio functions, yeah its super great when working in VOICE mode but when working in SONG and PATTERN mode the ARP settings will reset, so you have to find the original arp setting by browsing 7000 arps on each arp'ed preset. Dohhh
As you can guess, I am not super thrilled about Motif XF but I am a stubborn type of guy with a mission, the mission is simple, to improve Motif XF. I will start by making some of the sound designer samples which are missing and to make a point i will make these samples take ONLY 1 MB of the 128 MB free assignable ram in Motif XF.
177 KB is reserved for a useful 2 second NOISE sample. This gives me 823 KB to play with.
Wish me good luck ;)
/Michael
Sunday, September 26, 2010
Slow Tunes album out on Magnatune
Slow Tunes is my first album in many years.
Its about minimalistic synthesis which is supposed to put you into an relaxing state. First i used it for my self to fall asleep at night, the tones and harmonics distracted me so i would loose interest in deeper thoughts. It worked for me so it might work for others aswell and thats the sole reason behind Slow Tunes.
Each track repeats certain tones in an random order so you never know what to expect coming next and thats what distracts you. In my bedroom i have a small speaker set with a subwoofer, i never listen to it at high volume but at very low volume, just enough so i can hear all harmonics, and low enough so i can shut it out.
The album can also be used for quiet passages in movies or other visual stuff which needs a calm background.
Been wondering what behavior it would have on babies, but it might be an idea to try out if one should need a helping hand keeping babies calm. Just remember, small speakers can only reproduce the high harmonics and hearing the high harmonics only will be annoying, it needs to be a speaker set which covers the low-middle and highs evenly.
My speaker system in the bedroom is very like this type of speaker set:
Visit Magnatune http://www.magnatune.com/ and look me up if your interested in how Slow Tunes affects you :)
/Michael
Saturday, July 3, 2010
XSynth and Youtube
There is nothing much going on with this blog lately and thats because i'm posting most material on the youtube channel. So head over to my youtube channel to catch up ;)
http://www.youtube.com/user/michaelkastrup
Btw. www.synthtronic.com got snatched so i'm no longer using that url.
/Michael
http://www.youtube.com/user/michaelkastrup
Btw. www.synthtronic.com got snatched so i'm no longer using that url.
/Michael
Saturday, August 22, 2009
Tips for creating a playable synth patch part 2
Last time we talked about using Keyfollow for various synthesis function, this time we will look at using Velocity.
Velocity - Volume
Try hit a tone on any physical instrument with various strength and it will make a tone no matter how soft you hit it. This is the reason why i only have Velocity control Volume to a certain degree. Typical it will control 30-60% of the Volume but never 100%.
Velocity - Filter
Imagine the tone from a piano, when played soft its a kinda round smooth sound it produce. Play it hard and more brightness is added to the sound. The tricky part is to make that transition using Velocity, add too much Velocity to the filter and it will sound like the strings are about to break, add too little and it will sound muddy. Usually i find my self using a Velocity - Filter setting of max 25%.
Velocity - VCA-Decay
Imagine you hit a piano key soft and notice how long a decay it got, then hit i hard and notice the longer sustained note. To emulate this kind of behaviour we use Velocity - VCA-Decay. The correct setting for this depends on the instrument familie, drums need only a subtle change, pianos a bit more and guitars can go from a very short muted pluck sound to a very long sustained note. Velocity - VCA-Decay is often used along with a seperate Velocity - VCF-Decay to give the same feel to the filters, meaning the filter will open up as you play harder.
Velocity - Waveform
A classic Velocity - Waveform setting is when using Velocity to control the Pulse Width on a Square waveform. When emulating a jazz guitar sound i will often use Velocity to control the Pulse Width from a 40% position to a 30% position. This gives the waveform a little life on its own when playing at various strenght. Doing the same with Sync can also add a spark of life to the tone of a sound.
If you are working with Additive or Wavetable you can have the Velocity control the waveform in a more drastic way. Imagine a wavetable of nine pipes on a organ, have Velocity control the transition between those nine pipes going from 1 pipe to two pipes to three pipes etc. This will give you a very dynamic organ patch suited for soft to hard playing style.
This was some of the most obvious uses of Velocity within a synth.
/Michael
Velocity - Volume
Try hit a tone on any physical instrument with various strength and it will make a tone no matter how soft you hit it. This is the reason why i only have Velocity control Volume to a certain degree. Typical it will control 30-60% of the Volume but never 100%.
Velocity - Filter
Imagine the tone from a piano, when played soft its a kinda round smooth sound it produce. Play it hard and more brightness is added to the sound. The tricky part is to make that transition using Velocity, add too much Velocity to the filter and it will sound like the strings are about to break, add too little and it will sound muddy. Usually i find my self using a Velocity - Filter setting of max 25%.
Velocity - VCA-Decay
Imagine you hit a piano key soft and notice how long a decay it got, then hit i hard and notice the longer sustained note. To emulate this kind of behaviour we use Velocity - VCA-Decay. The correct setting for this depends on the instrument familie, drums need only a subtle change, pianos a bit more and guitars can go from a very short muted pluck sound to a very long sustained note. Velocity - VCA-Decay is often used along with a seperate Velocity - VCF-Decay to give the same feel to the filters, meaning the filter will open up as you play harder.
Velocity - Waveform
A classic Velocity - Waveform setting is when using Velocity to control the Pulse Width on a Square waveform. When emulating a jazz guitar sound i will often use Velocity to control the Pulse Width from a 40% position to a 30% position. This gives the waveform a little life on its own when playing at various strenght. Doing the same with Sync can also add a spark of life to the tone of a sound.
If you are working with Additive or Wavetable you can have the Velocity control the waveform in a more drastic way. Imagine a wavetable of nine pipes on a organ, have Velocity control the transition between those nine pipes going from 1 pipe to two pipes to three pipes etc. This will give you a very dynamic organ patch suited for soft to hard playing style.
This was some of the most obvious uses of Velocity within a synth.
/Michael
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
Tips for creating a playable synth patch part 1
Whats the big difference between playing a sample and a synthesized sound ?
Its the expression of the sound.
A sample is static whereas a synththesized sound can be much more.
To help us making a playable sound we have the following:
1. Velocity (Mapped to Volume,Filter and Waveform)
2. Aftertouch (Mapped to Vibrato)
3. Modwheel (Mapped to anything interesting)
4. Keyfollow (Volume compensation, Filter balance, Modulation (LFO) and Envelope spread)
5. (LFO) Modulation of the waveform (PWM, Wavetable, FM, Additive etc..)
Keyfollow example:
Pulse Width Modulation
A PWM waveform modulated by LFO will usually sound nice at the key we used to set the speed of LFO but if we play a much higher key it wont have the same modulation effect and if we play a very low key the effect will be way to much. This is where keyfollow comes in. We have to control the amount of LFO signal sent to the waveform by using keyfollow. In this case the keyfollow must be set to a positive amount around 50%+.
This should produce an overall nice modulation to the entire keyboard range.
Volume Balance
Next thing to consider using keyfollow is for Volume. High notes will alway be percieved at a higher volume than lower notes since high pitch sound travel faster thru air than lower pitch sounds. In this cast we have to use keyfollow with a negative setting thus making the lower notes play louder than the high notes. This is done by having keyfollow control the Volume with a 50%- setting.
This should produce an overall Volume balance to the entire keyboard range.
Filter Balance
Next thing to do with Keyfollow is balance filter offset for the entire keyboard range. Do we want it to play with a more open filter when playing high notes or do we wish to have the same strength of filter apply to the entire keyboard range. Remember IF you choose to have more open filter with high notes then the percieved Volume will be higher on high notes aswell so you need to adjust the Keyfollow->Volume balance.
Waveform Balance
The finishing touch using keyfollow goes to the Pulse Width waveform offset. When playing very high notes we all have a hard time hearing if its a Saw, Square or Sine waveform we hear. This is much more obvious when we play low key notes. To compensate for this loss of definition we have to strengthen the high keys towards a more Square'ish sound. In this case we use keyfollow to alter Pulse Width a small bit making high notes play with a wider Pulse Width and low notes play with a more narrow Pulse Width. Usually you would have to make the low notes be the offset and then have keyfollow increase the width as you play higher notes.
This concludes the typical use of Keyfollow.
/Michael
Its the expression of the sound.
A sample is static whereas a synththesized sound can be much more.
To help us making a playable sound we have the following:
1. Velocity (Mapped to Volume,Filter and Waveform)
2. Aftertouch (Mapped to Vibrato)
3. Modwheel (Mapped to anything interesting)
4. Keyfollow (Volume compensation, Filter balance, Modulation (LFO) and Envelope spread)
5. (LFO) Modulation of the waveform (PWM, Wavetable, FM, Additive etc..)
Keyfollow example:
Pulse Width Modulation
A PWM waveform modulated by LFO will usually sound nice at the key we used to set the speed of LFO but if we play a much higher key it wont have the same modulation effect and if we play a very low key the effect will be way to much. This is where keyfollow comes in. We have to control the amount of LFO signal sent to the waveform by using keyfollow. In this case the keyfollow must be set to a positive amount around 50%+.
This should produce an overall nice modulation to the entire keyboard range.
Volume Balance
Next thing to consider using keyfollow is for Volume. High notes will alway be percieved at a higher volume than lower notes since high pitch sound travel faster thru air than lower pitch sounds. In this cast we have to use keyfollow with a negative setting thus making the lower notes play louder than the high notes. This is done by having keyfollow control the Volume with a 50%- setting.
This should produce an overall Volume balance to the entire keyboard range.
Filter Balance
Next thing to do with Keyfollow is balance filter offset for the entire keyboard range. Do we want it to play with a more open filter when playing high notes or do we wish to have the same strength of filter apply to the entire keyboard range. Remember IF you choose to have more open filter with high notes then the percieved Volume will be higher on high notes aswell so you need to adjust the Keyfollow->Volume balance.
Waveform Balance
The finishing touch using keyfollow goes to the Pulse Width waveform offset. When playing very high notes we all have a hard time hearing if its a Saw, Square or Sine waveform we hear. This is much more obvious when we play low key notes. To compensate for this loss of definition we have to strengthen the high keys towards a more Square'ish sound. In this case we use keyfollow to alter Pulse Width a small bit making high notes play with a wider Pulse Width and low notes play with a more narrow Pulse Width. Usually you would have to make the low notes be the offset and then have keyfollow increase the width as you play higher notes.
This concludes the typical use of Keyfollow.
/Michael
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
XSynth Beatbox
Been awhile since my last post but i've been pretty busy. One of my lastest projects is a synthesized beatbox designed from scratch with each sound. The end result is a mix between the beatbox you would find in old organs and a TR 808, so the sound nature is more leaned towards a soft beatbox for old school synth arrangements and 80's pop arrangements.
Here is a snippet with some patterns:
http://www.xsynth.com/demos/XS_Beatbox_B.mp3
Here is an example of the beatbox used in an arrangement i made in Reason:
http://www.xsynth.com/demos/SugarPop.mp3
Besides that i'm more or less working towards creating a sampled synth setup for use with Reason.
/Michael
Here is a snippet with some patterns:
http://www.xsynth.com/demos/XS_Beatbox_B.mp3
Here is an example of the beatbox used in an arrangement i made in Reason:
http://www.xsynth.com/demos/SugarPop.mp3
Besides that i'm more or less working towards creating a sampled synth setup for use with Reason.
/Michael
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